I saved this one for last for…well no apparent reason actually.

While there are all kinds of great matches and promos, sometimes it’s something very simple that work better than anything else. The moments are the things that you remember more than anything else and some of these are bigger than others. Some of them are important moments and some of them are just fun, but they all belong on here.

Before we get to the regular nominees, we need to get a quick honorable mention. The night after Wrestlemania, Vince McMahon was about to announce the new General Manager of Raw. He mentioned the new GM being bald…..and here comes Teddy Long to accept the offer. Teddy started making a tag match but Vince said it wasn’t him. Teddy said “my bad” and danced off into the back. I laughed very hard and while it wasn’t important, it entertained me when I was sick and I’ll always take that.

Sticking with the night after Wrestlemania, there was the opening of Raw. Just….WOW. The opening sequence felt like it went on for an hour with the THANK YOU TAKER chants but once Reigns came out, the fans absolutely went off on him because he had taken their hero. This was pure anger from the crowd and that’s exactly what it was supposed to be. The follow up needed to be better but what an opening to the biggest Raw of the year.

What was the follow up? That would be Braun Strowman turning over an ambulance with Reigns inside. I’m not even sure what to say about that. Of course the visual was faked but at the same…..HE TURNED AN AMBULANCE OVER! What else can you really ask here? It was one of the coolest visuals WWE has put together in a long time and made Strowman feel like a star.

It’s been too long since we’ve gone down to NXT so we’ll have to look at Aleister Black saying Velveteen Dream’s name. I called this a promo but when the whole thing is four words long, I’m not sure you can really call it a promo. The idea of giving Dream everything that he wanted in the worst circumstances was poetic justice and an amazing moment at the same time.

We’ll stick around in NXT with Tommaso Ciampa turning on Johnny Gargano to split up DIY. They took the perfect amount of time to make this work and the Chicago fans were STUNNED. This is going to set up one of the biggest matches NXT has had in years and when Ciampa comes back, likely to screw Gargano over somehow, the reaction is going to be amazing. The split couldn’t have been better though and the beatdown worked very well also. Throw in the awesome shock and it’s very high on the list.

In a moment that I was lucky enough to be there for, we have the Hardys returning to WWE at Wrestlemania. I was in the stadium for that and heard New Day say that there was going to be another team. During the pause, I got to my feet and said out loud “they wouldn’t”. And then they did with the Hardys returning only a night after having a huge ladder match in Ring of Honor. This felt big and was the big moment that Wrestlemania needed. Well one of them at least.

The final two are about as different as you can be and we’ll start with the comedy option. Back on February 13, Chris Jericho was trying to show Kevin Owens that they were still great friends. This led to Jericho, in a shiny outfit that only he could pull off, presenting Owens various presents (including a painting involving the two of them and Jericho without pants) but the big finale made the whole thing. Owens gave Jericho a new list but it had Jericho’s name on it. Jericho pulls the list out of the box…..and it was the List of KO. The beatdown was on and the Wrestlemania match was made.

They got me. I’m not exactly easy to surprise in wrestling but I was actually shocked when that List of KO appeared. It was the perfect way to split up the team and Owens looked like the biggest heel in the world. At the same time though, Jericho looked like he was trying to be a good guy but Owens just turned on him. That’s how to make Jericho a face, and it worked to perfection. Amazing segment here and it’s going to take something special to top it.

And then the Undertaker retired (I’m going with that until I see otherwise). He took his gear off and stood in the middle of the ring in front of the Orlando crowd and then put it back on for one final time. When I looked at him, I saw Mark Callaway in Undertaker’s clothes, which was the first time that had ever been seen. Undertaker walked up the aisle and then descended through the stage to say goodbye. This one doesn’t need much more of an explanation and if it stands, will be one of the best moments in wrestling history.

Who says you have to be a wrestler to be in wrestling?

While this might as well be called the Paul Heyman Award, there are certainly several candidates for it this time around. It might be an announcer or an interviewer but there are a variety of options this time around. I’m not sure if anyone is going to get past Heyman this year, but when you show up every now and then, it’s easier to look great.

Actually yeah, this year someone can pass Heyman for the exact reason mentioned: he’s not around very often and that brings him down a lot. Sometimes you need to do more than talk about how awesome Brock Lesnar is and while Heyman can do that better than anyone else, I’d like to see him around a little more often to declare him the best in this role.

We’ll go with someone who is more of a jack of all trades now with Corey Graves. Is there anything this guy can’t do? He hosts shows, he does commentary on both major shows and he rips on Byron Saxton like no one else can do. Graves is fun to listen to and has some rather good heel roles in there, which few others know how to do anymore. He’s very talented and I’d love to see him do this for a very long time to come.

There’s also perennial nominee Dario Cueto, who brings a completely new dimension to this by being an actual actor. He’s capable of being incredible menacing while also calculating, but that evil smile is just perfect for looking like the biggest villain in the world. I’m really hoping he’s back for the next season as the show really wouldn’t work without him.

If Corey is a jack of all trades, Renee Young is a jill of them. She’s the perfect combination of smart, funny, edgy, flirty and interesting that you can imagine her pulling off anything you ask her to do. She does the occasional storyline but for the most part, she’s the most polished interviewer WWE has had in a very long time. There’s a certain charm to her that you can’t make up and it works like a….well a charm actually.

Above all though, there’s Zelina Vega. To have showed up from pretty much nowhere and become the best manager in NXT is quite the accomplishment. Vega and Andrade Cien Almas are one of the best pairings around as Vega is the perfect compliment to her. She’s stunning, manipulative, evil, conniving and can be physical when she needs to be. It’s made Almas interesting, which seemed to be one of the most impossible tasks in all of NXT. Vega pulled it off though and that’s enough to win this hands down.

It all kind of depends on this no?

Sure there are good matches and good promos, but which of them come together to make the best overall presentation? Some of them are of course better than others and some don’t need to exist (which they don’t) but when they work well, they can be some of the best shows you’ll see in a long time.

We’ll start things off at the beginning of the year with Wrestle Kingdom XI. The Wrestlemania of New Japan almost never fails to impress The main event was one of the best matches of the year and while I liked Kushida’s match better (which tends to be the case more often than not), this was an excellent show from top to bottom. A bit long for my taste, but the biggest show of the year should be longer.

Speaking of the New Japan Wrestlemania, I’ll throw in the WWE’s Wrestlemania as well. The show didn’t quite live up to the standards of some of its predecessors but that’s not to say it wasn’t very good. The Hardys return was a great surprise and the ending made it feel historic, definitely giving this some great moments top to bottom. If this had that one blow away match, it would probably win the whole thing.

We’ll wrap up the main roster potion here with Royal Rumble, which did have that blow away match as John Cena defeated AJ Styles to win his sixteenth World Title. The Rumble itself might not have been the classic it needed to be, but the drama near the end was very good and there wasn’t a really bad match on the show. It’s one of my favorite shows of the year and this one didn’t disappoint whatsoever.

But yeah, this is all about Takeover and that’s really not a surprise. We’ll start with Takeover: Chicago, which had the Match of the Year in Tyler Bate vs. Pete Dunne II but also a heck of a ladder match for the Tag Team Titles, followed by the awesome split of DIY. The triple threat for the Women’s Title was very good and the NXT Title match worked as well, because as is the rule in NXT: you really don’t have a single bad match.

Overall though, Takeover: WarGames is the Show of the Year and it’s not even close. Where do you begin with this one? The NXT Title match was a great surprise, WarGames actually delivered in spades and there’s the amazing (and still underrated by me) Velveteen Dream vs. Aleister Black match. The Women’s Title was won by someone new and the opening hoss fight were good as well. This one delivered as only NXT can and it beat everything else in the year.

This might be my favorite one.

Something a lot of people forget about wrestling is the importance of the talking aspect. If there’s no story to build things up, the match is just two people doing moves to each other. I need a reason to care about what I’m seeing and that’s where the promos come in. This year had some excellent promos, meany of which were only a few words line. Still though, they did their job and that’s what matters most.

First of all, I’m leaving the Festival of Friendship off because that’s more of a segment than a promo.

Since this is probably the hardest award of the entire year, I’m going to knock off one of the only ones which isn’t bouncing around my head as a possible winner. Samoa Joe was already the #1 contender to Brock Lesnar’s Universal Title but he wasn’t done yet. Instead, on the June 5 Raw, Joe went after Paul Heyman, telling him that he wanted Brock Lesnar before choking Heyman out. Joe is often described as one of the few wrestlers who feels real and that’s what he did here. It was a great moment and made Joe look like a real threat to Lesnar, which is exactly the point.

Next up we go down NXT for one of those short form promos that also capped off a story. For some reason, Velveteen Dream was obsessed with getting Aleister Black to say his name. This led to a downright bizarre feud with Dream seemingly being attracted to Black, who refused to say his name. They had a rocking match at Takeover: WarGames with Black kicking Dream’s head off. After the match, with Dream waking up, Black said “enjoy infamy….Velveteen Dream.” It was a great moment and capped off a great story with Black both giving Dream what he wanted but not in the same way. This was a really strong candidate.

Back to the main roster now with the one I enjoyed the most, albeit maybe not the best. Due to reasons that I really don’t agree with, one of the big matches at Wrestlemania saw Nikki Bella/John Cena vs. Miz/Maryse. This was a great way to give Miz exposure (and to give us a plot device for Total Divas) and Miz took advantage of it, leading to a series of “lost” Total Bellas episodes featuring Miz and Maryse as Cena and Nikki. These were some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen with the two of them perfectly mocking the ridiculous nature of the show. Throw in Maryse being a hotter Nikki than Nikki and these were GREAT.

It took me awhile but I finally managed to decide between the top two. In what might be the most to the point yet stretched out sentence that I’ve ever heard, Roman Reigns took the crowd to new levels of hatred. The night after Wrestlemania, Raw opened with nearly four minutes of fans chanting for Undertaker, who Reigns seemed to retire the night before. Reigns came to the ring and after standing for nearly five minutes with the fans not letting him get a word in because they were not having it, Reigns merely said “This is my yard now” before leaving.

If this had been followed by by Reigns being edgier or even turning heel, it’s the promo of the year easily. As it is though, it’s one of the most amazing displays of the fans being led exactly where WWE wanted them to go. Reigns looked like the biggest heel in the world here and it worked to pure perfection with the fans absolutely HATING HIM the entire time. This worked, but it wasn’t the best thing Reigns was involved in all year.

We’re going to August and back to one of the best talkers of all time. On August 28, John Cena and Roman Reigns signed the contract for a match at No Mercy. At the signing though, Cena tore into Reigns like few people have ever torn into anyone else, talking about how Reigns was supposed to be this next big thing but couldn’t do it because he was a corporate made John Cena bootleg. When Reigns fumbled his lines, Cena said it was called cutting a promo and if Reigns wanted to be the big dog, he better learn how to do this. Cena burned him several more times as it was as one sided as you could have gotten.

The big reason this worked though was it felt real. Just like with Rock vs. Cena from a few years ago, this felt like two people who had real animosity towards one another, leading to the two of them going off with the insults. Reigns tried his best but when you get personal with Cena, he just hits another level with the shots and promo work. It made Cena look like one of the biggest stars ever while Reigns was just left in the dust. Reigns won the match, but he lost this one handily.

That’s an upgrade.

One of the fun things to do in wrestling is look back and see who wasn’t such a big deal back in the day but then got better over the course of time. In this case we’re looking at the improvement over the course of a year, in which there were a lot of names who got far better than you would have expected from them.

As is so often the case, we’ll start down in NXT where they grow stars like few other places. One such star is Lars Sullivan, who came from practically nowhere and turned into one of the best monsters the show has ever seen. Throw him out there as a monster and let him run people over while showing no fear and no pain. It’s a story that has worked for years and there’s no reason Sullivan can’t pull it off exceedingly well.

Sticking in NXT (that might be a theme today), we have the current NXT Champion Andrade Cien Almas. Now this one might be a lot more about Zelina Vega being amazing and one of the best managers in a long time but Almas himself has turned into quite the act as well. He’s gone from someone who looked to be a lost cause to being someone who is a top star in the promotion and looking like a legitimate big deal. They have a good act together and one that looks like it could work for a very long time.

We might as well knock off the other NXT option with someone who shocked the heck out of me. Velveteen Dream looked like he was going to be any other effeminate character but wound up being not only a solid in-ring performer but one heck of a character who is almost mesmerizing to watch. His feud with Aleister Black was a major high spot but it was also the only major thing he did all year. Still though, one great thing is more than most people get in any given year.

We’ll head up to the main roster now with someone who didn’t do much in NXT but has found his calling in WWE. In this case we have Elias, who sings a song about every city he’s in and manages to get the fans to hate him every single week. It works like a charm and the in-ring work has been quite good as well. Elias might not be a top star but he’s a solid midcard hand and there’s nothing wrong with doing that for a long time.

Next up is someone who I had pegged to win this for a good chunk of the year with Neville. He was always talented and one of the better cruiserweights on the roster but the King of the Cruiserweights character was something fresh and new which made him feel so much better in a hurry. It’s a shame that he left the company under such bad circumstances but hopefully he’ll be back and no longer jobbing to Enzo.

Finally though, and this isn’t much of a surprise, we have Braun Strowman. Where do you even begin with the year this guy had? Strowman came into 2017 as just another strong man and came out as a fan favorite and someone you could see winning the World Title at some point in the near future. To take a fairly one note gimmick and knock it so far out of the park like Strowman has is quite the accomplishment and I’m looking forward to seeing just how far he can take it. Starting where he was back at the beginning of 2017 is all the more impressive, making him the most improved wrestler of the year.

It’s the building block of wrestling.

2017 was a heck of a year for feuding wrestlers, with some excellent options for the best feud of the year. Some of them were better than others but the top choices are hard to separate. There are almost as many options here as there are for any award, making this one of the hardest choices to make.

I’ll actually start with something from New Japan as you just can’t ignore Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega. I know the promotion isn’t built around promos like WWE but Okada challenging him for the rematch and the matches going 1-1-1 is way too much to look past. These two tore the house down every single time and put on an all time classic trilogy. Definitely worth a look if you somehow haven’t seen it yet.

We’ll go with a tag feud now and one that I considered putting at the top of the list with New Day vs. the Usos. These guys just beat the fire out of each other all year with some really entertaining promos and segments as a bonus. The Usos showed why they’re the best team in WWE at the moment while New Day got to prove that they still have it (you know, because they’re so old and such). Their match in the Cell was excellent and capped off an incredible feud, which is the big key that you need for one of these things to work. I loved this stuff and it made me an even bigger Usos fan.

Down to NXT we go (you knew this was coming) with Aleister Black vs. Velveteen Dream. This was much more psychological with Dream desperate to have Black say his name (with some innuendo running wild), leading to an outstanding match at Takeover: WarGames where Black beat Dream but gave him what he wanted. I got way into the build for this and it made Dream look WAY better than he would have otherwise. This is probably second on my list, which blows my mind as I was rolling my eyes when I heard the feud start.

We’ll stay in NXT (mostly) for the UK Title feud between Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne. They met for the inaugural title and then had two incredible followups for one of the best trilogies WWE has ever put together. Much like Okada vs. Omega, this was all about the action with both guys (who are way too young to be able to do stuff like this) leaving it all in the ring every single time. Their Chicago match was the best match I saw all year and I’d love to see these two again, assuming they don’t overdo the match.

We’ll continue with the battling countrymen with Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho. These two started the year off as best friends before falling apart at the Festival of Friendship (we’ll be coming back to that one). It lead to some awesome matches and title changes with some of the best moments of the first half of the year. I could have gone for one more big gimmick match between the two of them but what we got more than did the trick.

In another feud that didn’t last very long but was a lot of fun, we have Samoa Joe vs. Brock Lesnar. This was built around the idea of two guys beating each other up in a pair of matches that didn’t waste time. They beat the heck out of each other with the big match atmosphere that most people can’t bring. Joe’s promo of choking out Paul Heyman and saying he wanted Lesnar was great stuff and the singles match was as good of a short form match as you were going to find given this style.

The winner though is the other half of the Summerslam main event with Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns. This feud had more matches than the other options with a great segment (“I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU”) and some awesome, hard hitting matches. Reigns won the first match but Strowman dominated the rest of the feud, giving him a very rare win over Reigns. I never got bored with this feud and they beat the heck out of each other, making it the best feud of the year.

As usual, Kurt isn’t an option.

As much as wrestling fans like to talk about great things in wrestling, they seem to love to complain about the bad stuff even more. That’s what we’re looking at today with the worst stories of the year. Some of these will be more focused on the stories themselves but some of them are built around the matches, as you can classify both of them as angles for all intent and purpose.

Let’s get one of the big ones out of the way: Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasing story to most of the fans, the matches weren’t good and the promos were even worse. Mahal shouldn’t have been the World Champion and it kept getting worse the longer it went. This is going to be hard to top but I think there’s something in there.

We’ll stick with Mahal and go with his feud vs. Shinsuke Nakamura. Not only did Mahal beat him twice but there were the terrible promos with Mahal making fun of the way Nakamura looked and laughed, which was a combination of both unfunny and rather racist at times. I have no idea who approved of this stuff but it was really bad, which is as nice as I can be about it.

In the third straight Smackdown story, there’s Shane McMahon. What about Shane? Everything for the most part. He’s around way too often and the idea of forcing him into the face role isn’t working. I have no idea why I’m supposed to cheer for him but WWE seems obsessed with pushing him in that role no matter what. Somehow we might be getting a Daniel Bryan heel turn out of it, because that’s where things need to go. Shane is a horrible character and one of the worst parts of the entire show, which is covering a lot of ground.

We’ll head over to Raw for a change now and a story that made me thankful for the outbreak of a viral disease. For reasons that I don’t want to comprehend, WWE decided that Bray Wyatt should be taken over by his sister, a witch named Sister Abigail, to fight against the Demon version of Finn Balor. As usual, WWE would rather beat you over the head with a concept instead of showing your a little something and letting you figure it out on your own. Thankfully (work with me here), Bray got sick and the story was canceled. It was bad enough while it lasted and I can’t imagine how bad it would have been if it had finished.

I’ll also throw in the American Top Team invasion from TNA.  This was designed to showcase Lashley but wound up showcasing that MMA fighters can beat wrestlers, because that’s the kind of story that every wrestling fan wants to see.  The story went on way too long and wasn’t interesting in the first place, while also bringing in two MMA fighters for cameos at Bound For Glory, where there was no one else who could possibly have used the exposure.

There’s a big one left though and interestingly enough, it also involves Bray Wyatt. This time though it’s the entire Wyatt vs. Randy Orton feud, which not only managed to have horrible matches and segments but also managed to sink Wyatt’s main event career. He won the title, but then lost it in a match involving maggots and worms being projected onto the mat. For some reason someone thought this would be a good idea, and I feel that person should be taken out back and be forced to watch the match until their eyes rot out.

I’m running out of big awards.

This is where the whole thing comes together. The entire point of wrestling comes down to the wrestling itself (close enough at least) and some people just do it better than others. It’s been a great year for both men and women, hence why they’re put together here. If they’re both doing the same things, there’s no point in not judging them the same way.

I won’t be including Pete Dunne, Tetsuya Naito, Kazuchika Okada or Kenny Omega here as I just haven’t seen enough from any of them. That being said, if I had seen more from Okada, there’s a very good chance that he would run away with this thing. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen and the fact that he’s just thirty years old is amazing.

We’ll start with one of my favorites and someone who seems to always be a dark horse in something like this. That would be the Miz, who won the Intercontinental Title, consistently entertained and had me in stitches during the Total Bellas stuff. I’d have been much happier to see he and Maryse win at Wrestlemania but the performance leading up to it was good enough. Hopefully he’s featured even more this year as he’s one of the best around.

Next up we have a newcomer who had one of the biggest rookie years (eh ok that’s a stretch) in a long time with Samoa Joe. He showed up early in the year and took the Raw roster by storm, feuding with and beating Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. There was also a one on one pay per view title shot against Brock Lesnar and then being in the main event of Summerslam, which certainly isn’t bad for a debut year.

We’ll go to the ladies next with Charlotte. She started and end the year with some gold while having some awesome performances in between. It might not have been as great a year as she had in 2016 with the pay per view main event but Charlotte is so great at what she does with a great mixture of smoothness and poise that it’s impossible not to include her on here.

The other woman on the list is of course Asuka, who not only dominated NXT but is being treated as a big deal on the main roster as well. That sendoff she got from NXT was great stuff and really did showcase how good she had become over the years. She even mixed in some fun with the dancing, which is a very nice bonus. I’m a bit worried about what’s going to happen to her in the coming year but the previous year was very impressive.

In a very different side of the spectrum, there’s Braun Strowman, who went from a glorified lackey to getting multiple World Title shots on pay per view and winning a feud against Roman Reigns (that’s a rare thing to say). It’s hard to imagine him not being a World Champion at some point in the coming year and that’s a very interesting idea indeed.

For the winner, I’ll go with the safest pick I could possibly choose and say AJ Styles. He came into the year as World Champion and left as World Champion, plus picked up a US Title in the middle. Throw in getting good matches with Shane McMahon and Jinder Mahal plus having a Match of the Year candidate with John Cena and yet it still somehow feels like any run of the mill year for Styles.

This is one of the more fun ones.

For some reason, this one always seems like it should have a lot of nominees. The thing is though, most WWE pay per views aren’t all that bad. Sure some of them might seem like they don’t need to exist (because they don’t), but at the same time most of them give you at least something worth checking out. That wasn’t the case with all of them though.

I’ll be leaving Survivor Series off as I thought it was actually a rather good show held down by some HORRIBLE booking and execution of the show’s namesake matches. Throw those out and make it a regular pay per view and it’s a near classic with Shield vs. New Day and Brock vs. Styles. I don’t get the hatred for that one outside of the terrible main event.

We’ll start things off with a show that didn’t seem to get the point that it was going for. Clash of Champions, in theory at least, should be a show focused on champions. That made it a little weird when the show was almost entirely built around a non-title match between Randy Orton/Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kevin Owens/Sami Zayn. The show was main evented by a title match but that was the token main event at best. This show didn’t need to exist and with a total of six matches including one that was less than two minutes long, it was a mess.

If that show didn’t need to exist, then Payback didn’t need to even less. The problem here was the Superstar Shakeup, which was scheduled to start immediately after the pay per view. Therefore, none of the matches mattered and what we got (the House of Horrors) was a huge mess. This was a major scheduling conflict but it’s not like the was going to be any good no matter what they did.

I’d feel weird if I didn’t include a TNA show in here so we’ll go with Bound For Glory. The show was basically headlined by the return of Alberto El Patron and that meant we were stuck hearing the word perro a lot. The wrestling wasn’t great with the MMA vs. wrestlers match being a disaster and almost nothing positive standing out. As usual, this didn’t need to be a pay per view but I do understand that they need something to build towards. This just wasn’t the best choice.

Then you have the easy winner with Battleground and it’s not one but TWO potential worst matches of the year. This show was HORRIBLE aside from AJ vs. Owens and New Day vs. the Usos but the two really bad matches more than drag those down. This was an easy pick for me and a hands down winner, mainly due to that main event. Just….egads.

What a group of nominees to pick from.

Now this one almost completely depends on your definition of bad. There are some people who don’t belong in a ring no matter what they do and there are some people who just don’t ever change and serve very little purpose other than being a warm body. At the same time, there are people who I just don’t like who will be on here as well. It’ll be a mix of all three as this is really hard to define.

Before we get into this, I’m going to leave Shane McMahon off because I consider him to be someone who wrestles on occasion rather than a wrestler.

We’ll start with Tamina, who has been around forever and yet still has almost no reason to be there. Considering she debuted at the same time as the Usos, you really would expect her to have gotten at least somewhat better now. Her Superfly Splash isn’t terrible but there’s a gaping hole of charisma whenever she’s in the ring and I often forget she’s out there.

Sticking with the women there’s Lana, who is managing to set new standards for bad wrestling. At the end of the day though, I really can’t blame her for this one. She’s been wrestling less than two years now and hasn’t even had 75 matches yet with her first singles match coming about thirteen months ago. I have no idea what WWE was expecting when they threw her in the ring other than hoping people would swoon over her in the outfits (fair enough) but it’s not fair to put her out there like that. Just let her be a full time manager or go train for a LONG time before getting back in the ring because this isn’t fair.

I wouldn’t feel right without including the Young Bucks in here. Yes they’re athletic freaks and can be entertaining a lot of the time, but the superkick parties and almost never selling enough and the lack of any form of psychology to most of their matches puts them near the top. Though they did block me on Twitter so I must be doing something right.

A name that you’ll probably see on a lot of these lists is Jinder Mahal and while I couldn’t stand him for most of the year, there’s a huge difference between someone who is boring, repetitive and in way over his head than someone who is worthless. There’s value in Mahal, but he was being put in a spot he wasn’t ready for. Those are two different things and I’m not going to fault Mahal for the bad booking. I’ll fault him for being a boring promo and a repetitive wrestler though, which is quite bad on its own at such a high level.

Now someone on the other end of the spectrum is Dolph Ziggler, who is more than capable of having a good match but hasn’t changed his style in what feels like years. His meta stuff with the entrances isn’t doing anything for me and I really could go with him being away for a very long time, hopefully to recharge his batteries and change things up a bit as his style got old a long, long time ago.

That brings us to the winner and, in what shouldn’t be a surprise, I’m going with Enzo Amore. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I can’t stand him more than once for a variety of reasons, including he doesn’t change anything. It’s been the same “how you doin” promo and never shutting up, while almost never actually wrestling. When he does it’s not any good and we’re stuck with Enzo as champion while 205 Live dies because he gets so much attention. It’s a bad way to run things and the division has died even more with him on top. Get him out of here already so the division can actually have a chance.